Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A Bee's Life: Spaniel Edition

I've been wanting to write A Bee's Life post pretty much since I became a Bee, so it seems appropriate that I should finish my tenure here with my contribution to this series.

How did I find Weddingbee?A few months after getting engaged, I started to think more about the cultural traditions that I hoped to incorporate into our wedding. You already know I had a non-traditional mehndi, but you have to know the rules to break them! So I did some Googling on mehndis and came across this archived post by Mrs. Jasmine. Jasmine and I go way backto high school and college, so when I saw her picture on the blog, I got curious! (Fun fact: when I saw her picture and occupation on the side of the blog, I thought an impostor blogger was pretending to be Jasmine. Who knew I was so suspicious?!) I read through a few of her posts and some of the newer bloggers' posts, and got hooked!

Before finding Weddingbee I garnered most of my wedding inspiration from sites like Style Me Pretty and Green Wedding Shoes, which I still love. My wedding had a different aesthetic, though, and seeing the great variety of bloggers here made Weddingbee my go-to site pretty quickly.

My application storyUnlike many of the Bees, who began blogging hoping to become Weddingbee bloggers, I've been blogging since before there was even blogging software. ;) I've had a blog for just about every subject I've ever been interested in, and with the engagement, I knew I just had to document the process, since it was the only thing that held my interest! I'd been writing for my own teeny-tiny audience for about six months before I found Weddingbee. I'd like to say that the rest is history, but it's not!

I applied to be a Bee as soon as I got to the 8-month mark. I was rejected pretty quickly, but I thought I had a pretty good idea as to why: very little was settled in my wedding, and I was still hopping spastically from idea to idea without giving anyone an idea of what I was trying to do or who I was. The next time I applied, I had nailed down more vendors and wrote more thoughtfully about my plans and inspirations.

But I still got another rejection letter. I'm not gonna lie; I felt pretty wounded that time! I was pretty sure I didn't have it in me to get turned down a third time, but rather than not face the possible rejection, I just decided to turn in a really kick-ass application. I started writing like I really was already a Blogger, complete with a sidebar blurb that became my profile cloud here. I posted more personal photos so that readers could feel like they knew me. And I kept trying to write quality posts and avoiding fluff. Third time's a charm, right?

On being a Weddingbee bloggerBecause I had been blogging for so long before becoming a Bee, the first few months of blogging was easy-peasy: I edited a million posts to make them current and relevant, soaked comment love (I'm not sure y'all know just how much we bloggers love. your. comments. For reals), and slowly drafted the posts that would go live in the last few months of our engagement. I was also in school so I had a lot of free time, rather than working full-time, so blogging was not a huge burden (other third year law school students may disagree, but they probably enjoyed law school a lot more than I did, then! ;).

But that said, blogging 3-4 times per week about your wedding takes a lot of time. A good post takes research and photo editing, neither of which are quick efforts. A ton of time got sucked into the Bee, whether blogging or contributing to the Boards, and I didn't get a lot of downtime during that period. I didn't realize just how much time I was spending on the blog until after the weddingtaking my time with recaps was a tremendous relief!

Which brings me to my next point: GUILT. Weddingbee blogging comes with guilt in spades. ;) I knew my recaps would take longer than many just because I had to graduate and study for the Bar exam right after the wedding, which were obviously bigger priorities than blogging. But I still felt guilty knowing I was keeping the readers who made this whole blogging trip so much fun (have I mentioned comments?) waiting for me to finish!

Spaniel's tips for writing for the BeeI think the most important thing is to be yourself. (Bee yourself? No?) I sort of hate that advice because we've all heard it a million times and it feels like it doesn't mean anything. But you can't fake your voice when you're writing about something so personal as planning your wedding: being genuine in your writing is the best way to blog!

In that vein, I second all the Bees before me who said that you should only try to be a Bee if blogging is going to make you happy. Blogging and I had our share of tiffs over the past year, and when it wasn't fun? I took a break. If I had felt that way while blogging about the planning, I think it would have added a layer of stress to my life that I did not need at all.

But if you do love blogging for its own sake, why not take the leap? I would have kept on blogging even if I'd never made it as a Bee (although I might have posted a lot less often in those last few wedding planning months!). Blogging because you love it is so rewarding, and blogging for Weddingbee has definitely been the most fun and communal blogging experience I've ever had. The ladies of Weddingbee are a great, supportive communitybloggers and readersand I am so, so thankful that I've had the opportunity to share this part of our lives with each other. What a great experience this has been!

And with that, I sign off from my last official post for Weddingbee. I know I've been putting this off an awfully long timeI've been blogging here for just over a year!but thank you all for your patience, your support, your advice, your suggestions, and your attention. :) Wishing you all beautiful weddings and wonderful married lives!

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About Me

I'm a law student trying to balance graduating with starting my career, keeping up a relationship, and, oh yeah, planning an Old World, multi-cultural, moutain lodge wedding for 180 guests! A South Asian Jewish girl getting ready to marry my handsome Catholic Dane, I'm hoping to blend our cultures in our wedding just a bit more gently than by providing samosas as appetizers and offering æbleskiver for dessert. Although that would also be awesome.